Always be your baby
by thesumofmydecisions
Summary: As Claire, the oldest Karev daughter, is about to leave for college, Alex and Jo have also to deal with the changes on their relationship with the youngest, Natalie, and something that may cause her to grow apart from the family. Set on the same universe of Behind the scenes, I'll be home for Christmas and The only family we need.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Hi! For those who are reading my other story, **The only family we need**, I mentioned that I had started a story about Claire and Natalie, Alex and Jo's daughters. My plan was to have a few chapters written before start to show it, because I know I can't write as fast as I want, but it turns out that I also can't keep things to myself, so here it is. I'll keep updating both stories as soon as I finish each chapter, both on the same universe, but while the other is only a collection of oneshots, this one has a central storyline. I'll take a few chapters to establish their dynamic as a family eighteen years from now and the girl's personalities, so each review is very much appreciated. I hope you enjoy it :)

Disclaimer: I own nothing you may recognize.

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**2033**

"Good morning!" Jo tried her best singing voice as she entered the room of her youngest child at 4am. "Wake up, girl, we have a flight to catch."

"No!" Natalie protested, turning to face the wall with her blankets covering her head. "Why do I have to go? This is Claire's thing, not mine."

Jo sat on the teenager's bed and rubbed her daughter's arm. "We've been through that, Natalie. We're all going to California with your sister."

"But I have school!" Natalie replied. She wasn't going to do that easily.

"You know I've already talked to your teachers, and you're such a good student that they all agreed to let you take a few days to travel with your family."

The girl took the blanket from over her face to breathe, but still refused to open her eyes. "But why?"

Jo sighed. They had gone through that conversation twice since Alex and her decided about the trip. Claire wanted to visit some of the UC campi, and they thought it would be a good idea if all of them could go together, since it had been a while since they had a family vacation. "Because this might be our last trip as a family. And we don't do that often, you know how hard it is for me and your father to have time off together. Things will change when Claire goes to college, you're gonna miss these moments," she said, sweetly.

Jo waited. No sound came from Natalie's mouth and she thought that she had slept again. When she was about to squeeze the girl one more time, her eyes opened. "Fine," Natalie finally gave up, switching to a sit position, with her back against the yellow wall. "Just give me a minute."

The mother smiled. "Thank you. Dad is making breakfast and Claire is already waiting. Stephanie is gonna be here in thirty minutes to drive us to the airport."

That said, Jo left the room and went downstairs, trusting that her daughter was responsible enough to get up and get ready in time.

When Jo entered the kitchen, she found Claire impatiently tapping with her fingers on the table while Alex prepared pancakes.

"Where is she?" The older Karev girl asked as soon as she saw her mother.

Jo stopped besides her daughter and put her arms around Claire's shoulder. "She's coming. Don't worry."

Claire had her motives to be worried, though. Since she started to look for colleges, Natalie had been acting cold and distant. "I hope so. I don't understand what's going on. I know she's at that troubled age, but I didn't have this rebel phase, did I?"

Alex finished another bunch of pancakes and handed a plate for each one of them before entering their conversation. "I don't understand either. Shouldn't she be thrilled with skipping school to travel? She loves traveling!"

Jo chuckled, almost spitting her food. "Really? _You_ don't understand, Alex?" Both Alex and Claire looked at her, awaiting for an explanation. Over the table, Jo slapped her husband's head. "She's scared! Scared that Claire will leave and things will change too much, so she's trying to protect herself from being hurt. She learned from the best."

"Oh..." Alex started while his wife and daughter stared at him with their almost identical eyebrows raised. "So, we just have to reassure her that things aren't gonna change. Claire can go to the University of Washington and keep living here."

"Or she can adjust herself to the changes. You know I want to go to UC. They have the best technology programs from West coast." Claire replied. Her parents knew that she cared about her family, but she wasn't going to stop pursuing the career she wanted.

Jo was glad to support their daughter. She'd seen some of their friends trying to force their kids to choose what they wanted and that never ended well. And the girl was a computer genius.

Alex, however, was still resistant to let his seventeen years old baby girl live on another state. "Well, we don't even know if you're gonna get in yet."

Finishing to eat the first pancake, Claire got up and crossed the place to grab the milk on the fridge. When she heard her father's words, she changed her way to meet him on his side of the table. She put her hands around him and kissed his cheek. "Thanks, dad," she said. "That was really supportive." As she said that, her phone rang and the girl forgot what she was doing before to get the call away from her parents' ears.

Jo tried to hide a smile as she saw Alex's eyes following their daughter, but he soon noticed. "Come on, don't act like you want her to move out," he said.

"I don't," she replied. "But this is not our call." Jo got up and circled the table to sit on Alex's lap. "She's seventeen. We've got to accept she is not a baby anymore."

Alex put his arms around her wife's waist and gave her a soft kiss. "I know. I'm just frustrated that they're growing up so fast, and soon it will be just us getting old in this big house."

"It may be good to have some time just to ourselves again," Jo replied. She ran her hands on his already half gray hair, remembering how far they had come since the first time she entered the house that witnessed every phase of their relationship. Always a full house. She could understand why he wouldn't like the idea of the girls not being there one day. "But now, what about we just enjoy this trip and the three remaining years we still have with our teen grumpy at home?"

He chuckled. "Do you realize that, if Natalie leaves home at the same age as Claire, we'll have two years less with her?" Alex said, mentioning the fact that their younger daughter was already two when they adopted her.

"I know, that sucks. I will never stop wishing we had a time machine to go back and take her the second she was born," Jo sighed, sad to think about how they missed important milestones of their daughter's life, like her first steps and first words.

The couple stayed in silence for a while, until Alex kissed his wife again. It was a quick kiss, but it lasted enough for someone to catch them.

"Ew!" Natalie was standing at the door, making her parents to stop kissing and look at her embarrassed. Jo bite her lip. From that angle, the girl seemed even taller than she already was. And she looked older, wearing purple leggings, a long black cardigan and with her long dark hair put on a side braid with a beret. "You two are never gonna stop doing this in public, are you?"

Alex and Jo exchanged a look, both trying to restrain a laughter. Despite her height and her fourteen years - one year older than Claire was when they were called by the principal to deal with her first boyfriend problem at school - Natalie was still a kid.

The girl entered the kitchen and walked to the fridge to serve herself a cup of orange juice, while Alex got up to take the pancakes he had saved for her.

"You know, you should be happy that we are still in love after all these years. I bet some of your friends whose parents aren't together anymore would love seeing them sharing a quick and innocent kiss," Jo said, playful.

Natalie shrugged, chewing her food slowly without saying anything; she would never admit that out loud. Jo smiled to herself at how much the girl was like Alex. She was an artist version on her father. Good with words, unlike him, but saving them for her literature assignments and the writing she wouldn't allow any of them to read. Her feelings were only for herself, worrying her mother since she first noticed. What kind of thoughts was she hiding on that sensitive mind? And how should they deal with them?


	2. Chapter 2

The Karev clan arrived at the airport just in time, the lack of sleep finally hiting Claire and replacing her excitement when her parents left Natalie and her on a bench with the backpacks while they went to the check-in desk. When she saw that they were about to come back, she got up and went to the restroom, where she washed her face and reaplied a little make up. Then she went to a store to buy a bottle of ice cold water. When she got back, she found out that her mother and her sister had gone to the restroom too, but they had missed her.

Only her father was there, typing something on his cell phone - probably, instructions for someone at the hospital. It was good. She wanted to talk to him alone for a moment, she knew that the best way to find his opinion on something was not giving him the chance to give his pleading eyes to ask for her mother's help.

"Dad..." She said and waited until he looked at her. "Do you think mom is right about Natalie not wanting me to go?"

Claire noticed by his expression that he was caught by surprise and she couldn't say that she wasn't surprised too when she first started to consider all the things she had been thinking about since the moment her mother had said that.

"Well... She may be," he replied, simply.

Claire sighed at the short response. She knew dad wasn't a man of many words, she would have to try hard and go straight to the point. "You don't want me to leave either." _That_ was the real question. If she was going to take that step, she needed her father's verbal approval, not his agreement with her mother's, even though she knew he wouldn't agree unless he really agreed.

He chuckled and shook his head. "Of course I don't_ want_ you to leave. Not now and not ever." Claire laughed. He put his arm around her shoulder, bringing her closer and kissed the top of her head, before continuing. "But that doesn't mean I won't support your choices. Just want to see you happy."

"Thanks, dad." She smiled, but didn't look at him. Her thoughts were too messy and she wasn't ready to talk about them yet.

It didn't take long until Mom and Natalie arrived and they proceeded to the gate. Each step Claire took made her feel more nervous. Talking about college and sending applications was one thing, but actually visiting an University made things feel real. And she wasn't sure if she was ready for that reality.

She wanted, she really wanted to get admitted in one of the UC technology programs, but unlike most of her friends that were anxious to leave home, Claire didn't know who she was without her family and she didn't know if she could survive without having her parents to catch her when she fell. And she didn't want to talk to them about that, so she was pretending to be confident and decisive. They had no idea what she was going through.

The nervousness made her even more tired than she already was and Claire barely noticed as they entered the airplane and she sat, reclining her head at the window. The next thing she heard was the sound of her mother's voice.

"Claire? Wake up, honey."

Claire opened her eyes to find her mother sitting by her side on an noisy airplane. The corridor was full of people trying to walk, some taking their hand baggage. "Where are we? Where are Natalie and dad?"

"She asked to sit by the window, so I let her take my place with him. They're already out, that place is so much better than this. Sorry, I was waiting for you to wake up by yourself, but we'll have to go soon." The mother replied and Claire finally understood that they had arrived and she had slept the entire flight.

Natalie must've been so mad, they had fought for the window seat and they both loved to see the clouds from above. In addition to all the confuse feelings she already had before and the fact that she was hiding her doubts for weeks, that apparently small thing came like a wave to Claire's eye ducts.

Her mother frowned, concerned. "Are you okay?"

She chuckled when the first tear came out. "No... If I can't even wake up by myself, how am I supposed to live alone? This is a mistake."

Jo shook her head. "What are you talking about? I though you wanted..."

Claire interrupted her. "I do. I just don't know if I can. I mean..." She paused and closed her eyes, trying to calm her breath. "I never had to fight for anything, I never had to do anything by myself, because you and dad were always there to help me. And you are all strong. You always had to look out for yourself, dad had to raise his own siblings, Natalie is that tiny premie who is now taller than me and I'm just this spoiled weak daddy's girl, who happens to be good with algorithms." As she said that, she felt her throat getting dry with the realization that she could never live up to her parent's expectations, because it didn't matter how much she would still accomplish, it would never be as much as they did.

On the other side, her mother looked chocked, to say the least. "That doesn't make any sense. Alex and I are more than happy that you never had to go through everything that we had. We are more than happy to give you everything that you need."

Claire sighed. Seeing the pain in her mother's eyes, she regretted that she had ever started that conversation. "I know," she paused and started to laugh at herself. "And now I'm complaining because I have the best parents in the world, so I'm also ungrateful. Great. I'm a horrible person."

The tears started to fall again and she felt stupid. "Claire, look at me. You're not ungrateful, you're not spoiled, you're not weak and you're definitely not a horrible person. You're just under pressure and it's normal to be scared of change. I want you to make your own choices, but I'm gonna talk to your dad and we're gonna sit together to go through all the options, so we can figure out together what's the best for you, okay?"

Claire nodded. "So... You're not mad at me? Or disappointed?"

Her mother smiled sweetly. "Of course not." She put her arms around the girl's body and hugged her. Claire noticed that there were only a few people left in the plane and they were all looking at them, but she didn't care. She was just relieved that she had said everything and now she would have all the help she needed to make a good choice.

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**A/N:** As you all probably noticed, this chapter has a very different Claire than the previous. I get it may be a little confusing now, but trust me, it's on purpose. Just keep in mind that each chapter has a different point of view. And I've decided to work a little more on her side of the story before I move to Natalie, because she'll be important later. Also, I like her and I don't think anyone will complain if, by showing Alex and Jo being the best parents in the world, I'll will make the story longer than I originaly thought, right? :P

Anyway, thanks everyone for the support and please, keep telling me what you think.


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